11.13.2007

adventure

My life always seems to be full of unintended adventures. I often wish for a duller existence but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. This weekend's adventure actually took place on Thursday afternoon as I was driving north bound along the I-5 by Bellingham en route to Vancouver for my 4 day weekend (lecture was canceled on Friday). It was about 6pm and my temperature gauge suddenly shot up to hot and my check oil light came on so I took the first exit right onto a dark narrow road that led to a park-and-ride lot and a rifle range. As I slowed down I noticed smoke spilling out from under my hood and I damn near shit my pants. I turned off the engine and the smoke blew away so I was confident that running for my life away from both my car and the rifle range would not be necessary. After the car cooled off I tried to start the engine to get it to the gas station for some coolant, but it didn't want to start so AAA it was. They sent someone to tow my car to a nearby mechanic but in the meantime I had called my friends, one of whom is good with cars, to come see if they could get it running. I headed to the McDonalds across the street from the shop to wait for them to get there. Just a little while after I had spread out all the stuff I had to grade and gotten my cell phone plugged into the wall for a charge they arrived to rescue me from my own bad luck. Al diagnosed it as a cracked radiator since the oil was fine and the coolant was out and there was white crusty crap on it. We got a bunch of coolant and water and filled it up and hit the road. We stopped off at Fred Meyer a few miles up the road to refill it and pick up some beer and then made it all the way to Richmond BC. The next morning we brought it to my friend's cousin's mechanic. 24 hours and $657 later I got my car back with a new radiator. So that was my adventure heading to Vancouver. The visit itself was awesome save for the part where my dad lectured me continuously for creating a dangerous situation by driving in the dark. Keep in mind I left Seattle at 4:45pm, not 3 fucking am. But anyways, he blames me for everything whether I can control the situation or not.

Now on my way back I got adventure numero deux. I left my house at 11am Monday. Got to the border at noon. The sign that tells you the wait times for each border crossing wasn't lit and the line didn't look too bad. An hour and a few meters later, I decided I was wrong. It was really fucking obnoxiously bad. It was another hour before I actually got over the border. So that was 2pm. I had a meeting at 3pm with my classmates to do some content analysis stuff. Didn't look like it was going to happen, especially when I hit crazy traffic in Everett. I finally made it to my meeting in Capitol Hill at 4:45pm. I basically spent 6 hours in my car today. If I didn't have a full battery and many episodes of Weeds on my laptop I might not have survived the 2 hour border wait. I don't think I'm in the mood to visit Vancouver again for a while.

How come when Denny has adventures he gets invited to strangers' homes to play beer pong where he then drinks all the beer? My adventures are expensive and time-consuming and there's no free beer involved.

1 comment:

Robyn said...

i think that same radiator thing happened to me... or something like it. there was smoke coming out of my hood anyway.

and i hate that feeling of knwing you're going to be late and you can't do anything. ugh.

do you think there is something about chinese/asian parents always wanting their kids to see the errors of their ways? i remember complaining to my parents about like some teacher or some friend or some situation and they're always like, "well, what did you do wrong?" and then my husband's mom is always like "poor baby" even when he's the one that fucked the whole thing up. *sigh* oh well, i'm sure i am turning into my parents anyway.